VOGONS


First post, by andreja6

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I know that Sound Blasters and compatibles can play some relatively amazing and detailed sounds (even played some really cool FM synth midi sounds through Windows 98) , although such probably was not that easy to do through program due to lots of CPU usage... I wonder if it is possible today or even if such a program actually even exists?

Reply 1 of 6, by cyclone3d

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The PCM sounds are going to be pretty much the same no matter the card. 8/16/mono/stereo are really going to be the only difference.

The FM music (Yamaha OPL2/3) is also universally the same as long as you have real Yamaha hardware no matter the card.

DOSBOX emulates a lot of stuff so there is that.

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Reply 2 of 6, by andreja6

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cyclone3d wrote:

The PCM sounds are going to be pretty much the same no matter the card. 8/16/mono/stereo are really going to be the only difference.

The FM music (Yamaha OPL2/3) is also universally the same as long as you have real Yamaha hardware no matter the card.

DOSBOX emulates a lot of stuff so there is that.

I didnt really write it out right. I meant to ask if there was software that emulated MPU-401 on sound blaster compatible cards using PCM/FM Synth

Reply 3 of 6, by keropi

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you mean something like a "virtual midi device" ? such things only exist under windows

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Reply 4 of 6, by keenmaster486

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I thought there was such a program/driver/TSR.

Something that acted as software MIDI under DOS, playing (as I remember it) through the OPL3 chip.

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Reply 5 of 6, by cyclone3d

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keenmaster486 wrote:

I thought there was such a program/driver/TSR.

Something that acted as software MIDI under DOS, playing (as I remember it) through the OPL3 chip.

It might be possible to do so, but the only things I could find are a few different MIDI players that can use the FM synth.

To make it work for games, you would have to capture the MIDI I/O and forward it to the FM I/O port after running it through a translator.

You probably could get a starting point by looking at the source code for one of the players as far as the translation part goes.

http://dosmid.sourceforge.net/

http://bisqwit.iki.fi/source/fmdrv.html

https://github.com/Wohlstand/libADLMIDI

http://vgmrips.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1935

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 6 of 6, by yawetaG

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There's a Yamaha MIDI driver that allows you to play MIDI via the FM portion of your (Yamaha YMF-based) sound card, but it only works under Windows 95/98 (and probably Win 95/98 DOS window).